His parents, Michael and Sharon Adamitis of Kirkville, vowed never to be like THOSE parents, the ones that spend every weekend at soccer fields or ice rinks and have their lives revolve around sports and the games their children play.

Today, the Adamitis family is up to their epees in the sport of fencing. Their days, nights and yes, weekends, are filled with sports.

All three of their children – Noah, Rebecca and David - are fencers. Noah, 17, will graduate from high school this year and has fast-tracked in the sport where he’s over the past year competed in Sweden, Italy and Montreal along with U.S. cities from California, to Texas, to New York City.

In April, Adamitis was ranked No. 3 in the country out of 96 junior fencers with Class A ratings. Last month at a tournament in Minnesota, he was 16th out of 57. It was his first jump from juniors to men’s competition. Last fall, he defeated the No. 1-ranked junior fencer in the country. And in February at the Junior Olympics in Portland, Oregon, Adamitis was ninth out of 193 fencers. He was disappointed because he’d hoped to finish in the top three.

And to think this all started five years ago with a Christmas present.

“My dad got me some of the old Mark of Zorro movies,” Adamitis said. “He said, hey, you want to try it? It looked like a lot of fun. I said, I’ve got to give this a shot sometime.

“So I looked up fencing clubs in Syracuse. Five years later, here I am.”

He did try team sports like baseball and soccer, but fencing fit. He was better at it and it fit his intellectual side. Adamitis tackles big reads like “War and Peace” and “Les Miserables.” He’s taken Latin. But up among the book shelves in his bedroom, he has a poster of Bruce Springsteen, who he went to hear in concert at Vernon Downs in 2012.

But there was something about those movies that whet his appetite for fencing. And it turns out it was more Zorro than the lightsabre battles of the Star Wars movies that ignited his passion. Still, Luke Skywalker or Darth Vader? Adamitis turns from the dark side.

“I like how he’s kind of the underdog,” he says, “and has to fight the big Empire.”

Gravitating from pretend stick fights in the backyard to the clings and clangs of epees in competition seemed natural and fit the intellectual and competitive pieces of his personality.

Adamitis, who is home-schooled, trains at the Syracuse Musketeers Fencing Center inside ShoppingTown Mall four days a week for three hours at a time during his competitive season. He has supplementary workouts at Strength in Motion. He works as a lifeguard at Gold’s Gym. Michael Adamitis says his son possesses not an ounce of body fat.

In the past year, Adamitis has competed in 11 major tournaments. He won a tournament in Montreal, was 14th out of 167 competitors at a World Cup tournament in Udine, Italy, and was fifth out of 309 competitors at a Junior tournament last summer in Columbus, Ohio.

Adamitis trains at the Syracuse Musketeers Fencing Center at ShoppingTown Mall in DeWitt under coach Lubomir Kalpaktchiev, a former member of the Bulgaria national fencing team. There are about 60 people in the local fencing community.

“He has a lot of talent,” Kalpaktchiev says of Adamitis. “He works harder. He dedicates himself and he loves it. He’s always looking for different stuff and researching it. He’s dedicated to the sport.”

Adamitis has earned a full athletic and academic scholarship to fence at the NCAA Division I level with St. John’s University. He was also recruited by Notre Dame, Ohio State and Penn State. He said he’s looking forward helping the Red Storm win an NCAA championship. If the Olympics ever happened down the road, that would be cool, too.

Kalpaktchiev said a fencer’s maturity doesn’t really kick in until about the age of 23-24. The ceiling remains high for Adamitis.

He’ll transition this year to college, but he’ll always love the funny double-edged sword of that old family directive about not becoming sports parents. Since the first of the year, he’s traveled to Minnesota, Portland, Virginia Beach, Dallas, Columbus and Cleveland for competitions. His parents have spent upwards of $18,000 in travel, entry fees and training costs just on the current season.

“It’s been kind of a long, strange journey,” said Michael Adamitis, who runs the communications for the Air National Guard at Hancock Field.

“I’ve been all over the world with it,” Noah said. “I just love the sport.”